Carbon capture: An unprecedented challenge

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is now in a critical period of development and initial deployment that will determine if the capital and operational costs are viable. The legal frameworks, financial support and demonstration plant designs are nearing completion in several countries around the world.

So far, only a handful of large complete CCS operations exist or are under construction. By 2015, at least 20 commercial-size demonstration plants will have to be built and start operating to prove that CCS is a viable proposition.

The greatest challenges do not lie in developing improved carbon capture methods, or in safely and securely storing the CO2 underground. The two critical problems are primarily political.

Firstly, the financing of large individual projects is difficult in a market economy in which CO2 is still not priced at its true environmental cost. Secondly, we urgently need to develop a balanced legal framework to cover the storage sites, which both protect the public interest and enable CCS to be commercially viable. Industry must be able to transport, inject and store CO2, and then close and withdraw from filled storage sites without fear of overly onerous long-term liability.

For CCS to deliver the emissions reductions required, thousands of projects will be needed. This requires heroic rates of construction and large financial expenditure. To make this happen outside the world’s richest countries, we may need a piecemeal global agreement on emissions reductions and carbon markets, or to impose carbon tariffs on goods imported from developing countries which have produced significant CO …